Issue 39, 2018, Issue in Progress

Facile and scalable synthesis of sub-micrometer electrolyte particles for solid acid fuel cells

Abstract

Nanostructuring fuel cell electrodes is a viable pathway to reach high performance with low catalyst loadings. Thus, in solid acid fuel cells, small CsH2PO4 electrolyte particles are needed for the composite powder electrodes as well as for thin electrolyte membranes. Previous efforts have resulted in significant improvements in performance when using sub-micrometer CsH2PO4 particles, but laborious methods with low throughput were employed for their synthesis. In this work, we present a simple, robust, and scalable method to synthesize CsH2PO4 particles with diameters down to below 200 nm. The method involves precipitating CsH2PO4 by mixing precursor solutions in alcohol in the presence of a dispersing additive. The influence of the concentrations, the batch size, the solvent, and the mixing process is investigated. The particle size decreases down to 119 nm with increasing amount of dispersing additive. Mixing in a microreactor leads to a narrower particle size distribution. The particle shape can be tuned by varying the solvent. The ionic conductivity under solid acid fuel cell conditions is 2.0 × 10−2 S cm−1 and thus close to that of CsH2PO4 without dispersing additive.

Graphical abstract: Facile and scalable synthesis of sub-micrometer electrolyte particles for solid acid fuel cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Apr 2018
Accepted
29 May 2018
First published
13 Jun 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2018,8, 21806-21815

Facile and scalable synthesis of sub-micrometer electrolyte particles for solid acid fuel cells

F. P. Lohmann-Richters, C. Odenwald, G. Kickelbick, B. Abel and Á. Varga, RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 21806 DOI: 10.1039/C8RA03293A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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